Learning to follow and fine tune your instinct can be beneficial for quick decision making.

We have all heard the saying “follow your gut” or “go with your first instinct”. But how sound is this advice and how easily is it carried out? Do you rely on your initial instinct or do you second guess it? Is it better to take time and think things through or is that just self-doubt? Do we have intuition for a reason and what is the actual science behind it?

‘Our gut is a live wire of neurons and regulation’.

Renowned journalist, author, and a bit of a social scientist Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book dedicated to the science behind going with your gut. The book was titled Blink, in its Gladwell argues that our highly advanced brains process the decisions we need to make in as quickly as two seconds. This of course goes against the idea that important decisions need to take time before being made.

Gladwell’s rational comes down to three main principles. They are as follows:

1. Quick decisions are every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.

2. Your gut instinct tells you when to be wary and when to be trusting.

3. Our snap judgments can be educated and controlled.

Here is the reasoning behind these principles, let your subconsciousness take the lead. Our subconsciousness builds its strength through our life experiences. It is like a super-computer that is constantly collecting and storing data that we usually unaware of. Our subconscious is full of information that we don’t even realize we know.

Yet of course there are backfires and errors sometimes, this based on our own biases and snap judgments. The only way to fine tune your instincts to spot your own biases and learn how to change them through your own perceptions.

The man revered as the father of American psychology, William James, said, “True beliefs are those that prove useful to the believer.” Few things are absolutely true forever. Science keeps discovering phenomena that debunk what we thought we knew.

Por: Alexandria Addesso, Kean College, Nueva Jersey.

Comments are closed.